SEMI-CONSCIOUS

Ora-Ora is excited to present Semi-conscious, British artist Stephen Thorpe’s first exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition features all new work created over the past few months, drawing on the artist’s latest series of paintings that take corners and arcades as their focal point. Semi-conscious opens on Friday 27 November, 2020 during the much anticipated art week this autumn.
Semi-conscious denotes a state of being that is only partially conscious, the space between full conscious awareness and unconscious existence discovered only through personal introspection, dreams, memories, repressed feelings, automatic reactions and the confrontation of hidden phobias and desires. Even though unconscious elements of one’s psyche exist well under the surface of consciousness, they are theorised to exert an impact on behaviour, thoughts and visual associations and can come to the fore through creative output. The paintings on show in Semi-conscious demonstrate this delicate state, that within the artist’s own mind but also as part of the wider “collective unconscious” (the collective experience of cultures or mankind) as a statement on the world of limbo we find ourselves in, whether through social isolation brought on by COVID-19 or through dependence on digital technology and escapism from reality.